Following several homemade-style recordings and a children’s album (Alphabutt), the afro-sporting singer-songwriter releases Thunder Thighs. The children’s music theme continues on Mare and the Bear, a duet with her five-year-old daughter Panda (yes, Panda). Like several other moments on the LP, it comes across as both charming and a little off-putting. The idiosyncratic Dawson has clearly found a kindred spirit in equally left-thinking Brooklyn emcee Aesop Rock, who appears on four of the album’s tracks. On Miami Advice the duo create an oddly catchy anthem about society and the perils of social media, in a collision of folk and gangsta rap. Music has been lacking the black comedy provided by folk troubadours and in these tumultuous times it seems relevant. “Sitting home alone in a pool of your own stickiness/jerking off to your own tweets I found on the share while you insult everybody for what they write on Twitter,” she says in her partly-spoken word patter. Dawson’s name may translate to ‘silent’ in Swahili but here’s hoping this lady doesn’t go quiet anytime soon.
Best Track: Same Shit/Complicated
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: BEN FOLDS Rockin’ the Suburbs, WEEZER Pinkerton, EL-P Fantastic Damage
In A Word: Compelling
